Most notably, that plan involves a peninsula-wide ban on the baiting and feeding of deer. Some legislators — not to mention those who grow, sell and use bait — feel this was far too drastic a first step at controlling the disease.

I have to agree.

Efforts began in 1996 to control bovine tuberculosis (TB), starting with volunteer halts on baiting and feeding in DMU 452 — a county-size chunk of land encompassing portions of Alcona, Alpena, Oscoda and Montmorency counties. It wasn’t until 1998 that feeding was banned in the movement-restricted zone (MRZ) which included those same counties, plus Otsego and Presque Isle counties. Finally, in 1999, baiting of deer and elk was banned in those six counties, as it still is.

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Upon the discovery of CWD in a privately-owned, fenced facility in Kent County, the DNR was immediate to enact a peninsula-wide ban on feeding — obviously a different procedure from that to control TB.

The difference may be that CWD is deemed by the DNR to be always fatal for the infected animal, while TB-infected animals can get very sick and emaciated but survive.

The practical similarities between the diseases outnumber the differences. Bovine TB and CWD are both spread primarily the same way, by nose-to-nose contact between animals or through the saliva (presumably left on partially-eaten feed) of infected animals. Both diseases can make the deer herd very sick and can be spread at about the same rate.

The point is, for more than a decade we’ve been dealing with an epidemic. Even with the restrictions on feeding and baiting, the DNR observed a spike in the number of harvested deer infected with TB in 2006, with 2 percent of deer killed testing positive for the disease. That amounts to thousands of animals, yet feeding and baiting have been allowed, for the most part, to continue.

Now, because of one deer at one facility in one county, all sorts of people and industries are left to suffer. The farmers who grow and sell the feed as a regular part of their income; the service stations that sell it to hunters gassing up; the motels and restaurants which put up and feed the hunters (who may just not hunt this year) — all will take a financial blow. Do I even need to mention Michigan’s current economy?

The DNR itself will be burdened with enforcing the baiting and feeding ban, which will undoubtedly prove to be a physically and monetarily exhausting task. In the MRZ, the DNR has employed airplanes and ground patrols to seek out bait piles in the same fashion as aerial drug busts. Spread out across the Lower Peninsula, this practice could get very expensive, very quickly. People will still bait, bottom line.

At this point, when interest in the sport of hunting is drying up and license sales are dwindling, do we need another excuse for hunters to throw up their arms and say “To hell with it?” Not in the least.

So here’s what Sen. Jim Barcia, D-Bay City, Rep. Joel Sheltrown, D-West Branch, and Rep. Jeff Mayes, D-Bay City, are proposing: Lift the peninsula-wide ban and apply a ban on baiting and feeding in Kent County and in reasonably close proximity to control the potential spread of the disease.

Otherwise, we’re all bound to suffer.

— Chris Engle is a staff writer for the Herald Times and an avid outdoorsman. His column appears the second and last Saturdays of the month. Contact him at 748-4517 or cengle@gaylordheraldtimes.com.